


It's Yours Just As It Was

by Serendipity_Stupidity



Series: Lost and Found Again [3]
Category: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) - Fandom, Captain Marvel (2019), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Carol's POV, F/F, Fluff, Post-Avengers:Endgame, seriously you guys can take a shot every time i use the word 'fond' at this point, well the russos didn't deliver the lesbian reunion so here i am again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 05:51:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19193023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serendipity_Stupidity/pseuds/Serendipity_Stupidity
Summary: In all the sprawling expanse of the universe, love had been the only thing powerful enough to drive her to her knees.[A conclusion to Your Love Was Unmoved and Make Your Good Love Known To Me]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place mere moments after the end battle scene in Endgame, so if you haven't seen that there will be spoilers ahead.
> 
> The story is set around 25 years after the sequel in this trilogy, so Maria is in her early 50s and Monica is in her late 30s. Please do not ask me to do math, I am tired and gay.
> 
> I tried to write from Maria's POV, but for some reason it felt more desperate to be written from Carol's viewpoint which was infinitely trickier to pin down. There's so much righteous anger and self-doubt in that woman it's barely possible to contain her in words. 
> 
> Please enjoy my fumbling attempt. Title is taken once more from As It Was by Hozier.

* * *

 

Carol was running the second her boots hit the earth, swathes of overgrown grass stretched out like the sea before her. The porch steps rose out of the undergrowth, nearly consumed, as if the weeds were trying to drag the house down into the soil.

 

Her hands broke the lock as soon as she breached the door, wrenching it open on rusted hinges. The silence that followed swept through her like a ghost. She let out a ragged breath, one she hadn’t known she’d held, and her legs threatened to buckle.

 

_Wasn’t it supposed to be everyone? Weren’t they all back?_

 

There was no where else Maria would be. Carol had found her dust in the hallway, like a relic left in a wreckage. Like a shadow with nothing to cast it. An echo; a remnant.

 

She’d fallen to her knees back then. She feared she might do it again now.

 

A sound jolted her out of it, stark in the quiet.

 

Footsteps across the landing. Great, purposeful, loping steps.

 

A flash of apprehension lanced through her. She was in no state for another fight, if someone had broken in. She feared she might end up doing real damage to someone if they tried to cause trouble in this house. There was too much residual bitterness in her right now to hold back.

 

But when the footsteps reached the top of the stairs, Carol looked up and went utterly still.

 

Maria looked a little wild, a baseball bat gripped tightly in both hands. As soon as she saw Carol, she lowered it, the defensive tension ebbing from her.

 

“Carol Danvers,” She admonishes, looking pissed. “You almost gave me a heart attack. Did you just break my door?”

 

Carol can’t make herself speak. She’d yet to move, or breathe out.

 

“Did you do all this?” Maria persisted, exasperatedly gesturing around with her bat. ”There’s - dust, _everywhere_. Cobwebs, rust, the lights don’t work - did you bring something radioactive home again?”

 

When Carol had still yet to answer her, Maria creased her brow, taking in the sight of her.

 

“You cut your hair, ” Maria says slowly, as if that were somehow important. As if it mattered.

 

For some reason, that’s what makes her legs give from under her.

 

Carol can’t remember the last time it mattered what she’d cut from herself. She was a long golden ribbon, and everyone wanted a piece. She had nothing left to give.

 

“Jesus, Carol,” Maria swears, dropping the bat and taking the stairs two at a time to get to her.

 

When she reaches her, Carol looks up at her from her knees. The exhaustion washes through her like a great arcing wave, and tears spill down her cheeks in two perfect streaks.

 

She closes her eyes against it, let’s herself finally breathe. Maria crouches down in front of her, hesitantly fussing about, brushing her hair from her face, the tears from her cheeks. She’s speaking, asking her what’s wrong, what happened, why was she crying - but it rings together, overlapping into a superimposition of white noise.

 

Carol just lets herself fall forward, her face pressed to Maria’s shoulder. The exhaustion makes everything black around the edges, and Maria is so warm. Carol can’t remember the last time anything had felt this soft. Can’t remember the last time anything had touched her in anything but violence.

 

The dark and warmth eclipsed over each other, swathed around her, and Maria’s voice was the last thing she’s consciously aware of before she’s no longer conscious of anything.

 

It’s the first time sleep had found her easily in years.

 

* * *

 

When she wakes, it’s to the sound of soft voices from the dining room. A soft howl swept through the house, the wind whistling through the open corridor. She sits with a start, takes in where she was.

 

The room is familiar, coated in an unfamiliar haze of dust. She’s on Maria’s coach; she’d woken up here before. Drunk in their college days, exhausted after training drills, sun-warmed and lazy in syrupy afternoons in June. Banished from their shared bed when she was too stubborn to apologise.

 

Her head clears of fog, and she notes her body feels clean. Bathed of the blood and dirt grafted into her skin after the fight. Her wounds had been seen to. She was wearing one of Maria’s sleep shirts; beaten soft and threadbare by countless washes. It smelled faintly of Maria’s cologne.

 

When she stands, she is a little unsteady on her feet. She had no concept of how long she’d been asleep. It could have been minutes - it could have been days.

 

She pads hazily into the dining room, towards the soft spoken voices.

 

Maria and Monica are sat across from each other, hands held in each others on the dining table, speaking in hushed tones to one another. Both of their eyes are bright in the afternoon light, and look as though they might have been crying for hours.

 

Maria is the first to notice Carol’s presence in the doorway, and her gaze draws Monica’s attention.

 

“Carol,” Monica’s voice wavers, as though she were on the verge of crying once more, and Carol knew the feeling. “She’s home.”

 

The simple phrase bore weight Carol could barely comprehend, and she had to close her eyes against the force of it. The world could start moving on it’s axis again, because she was home.

 

She breathed out, a little shakily, and makes herself smile.

 

Monica stands and makes her way over to her, drawing her into her arms. She pulls back after a few moments to smile up at Carol, and gives her shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

 

It makes her inescapably aware of how much Monica had grown; offering reassurance when Carol was so used to giving it to her.

 

In her mind, Monica was still covered in engine grease in her dungarees and pigtails, but the person standing before her was a woman; and she'd held strong throughout all of it, never faltering. Carol still thought of her as her kid, but she’d set foundations for herself now, and was raising a family of her own.

 

It was moments like these that made Carol aware of how much she’d missed, being away in the stars.

 

“I’ll give you two some time to talk,” Monica offered, seeing the lost look on Carol’s face. She gives Carol one last squeeze before disappearing off to the porch way, leaving them alone together in the kitchen.

 

Carol meets Maria’s gaze with a tentativeness she’d not felt since she was a child,and her mind is blank of all the things she’d thought she’d never get the chance to tell her again.

 

“You raised a strong kid,” She manages, in lieu of something devastating that was threatening to spill out of her. “She missed you.”

 

Maria’s expression was fond and aching in equal measure, because she knew exactly how it felt - to be without someone she loved for years, with so little hope of return.

 

Maria knew what the absence of years could do to a person.

 

Carol had never been good with words, or expressing how she felt unless it burst forth from her like a solar flare. Anger, she could do. Sharp cutting bitter words, spat from her mouth in rage - she was accustomed to that, well acquainted with it; but being gentle - that was something she’d have to get used to all over again.She didn’t know how to compose precise, delicate speeches for soft moments like this.

 

She didn’t know how many more times she could take it; learning to love something she knew she could lose.

 

Before, even billions of lightyears away, on the surface of some distant planet, she’d never felt alone - knowing Maria would be home for her when she got back. But knowing she wasn’t there, wasn’t anywhere in whole expanse of the universe, that she’d simply ceased to be - it had cut her loose from any moorings she had left. She was untethered, directionless, pulled in every which way by nameless people from endless planets.

 

How could she possibly put any of that in words?

 

All she could do was come to kneel on the dining room floor in front of Maria’s chair, look up at her with everything open on her face and pray she understood. Pray that she knew;that the last five years had been a millennium, a life sentence, an eternity.

 

“That is the second time today you’ve come to kneel at my feet,” Maria says, soft and adoring and frustratedly fond. She cups Carol’s cheek in her palm, and Carol presses into the touch, desperate. “I’m beginning to feel worshipped.”

 

Carol just looks up at her, reverent, and her lips part with words she barely realises she’s saying aloud.

 

“I’d build you a temple,” She tells her, sounding feverish. “I’d pray to you, once in the morning and again in the night.” With every word, she sounded more rapturous, more deliriously in love. “I’d bring you offerings and wine and gold and ritual sacrifice and anything you asked for. There’s people on planets out there who can barely wield fire, I could turn you into a religion. All I’d have to give them was your name.”

 

Maria looks down at her, stunned into silence. Then her expression softens into something more partial, softly amused.

 

“Carol Danvers, that is such a line,” She teases, running her fingers through the short crop ofCarol’s hair. Carol feels tears threaten to spill over at how soft her touch was.

 

“I’d give you the heart of a star if you wanted one,” She tries again, desperate for Maria to understand. Her voice shook with how much she needed her to know.

 

Finally, Maria’s expression falters, eyebrows creasing in empathy. Carol sees the same overwhelming ache of love reflected back at her from Maria’s face.

 

Maria leans down, presses her hand to Carol’s ribs, says, “I already have one,” and when she kisses her, Carol lets out a sob.

 

She cries, and Maria kisses her cheeks, her eyelids, the corner of her mouth, her lips.

 

She kisses her, and Carol could feel the Earth turn beneath them. She could feel the heat of the sun, the steady tug of the moon, the call of the stars and all of the thousand planets that needed her and none of it mattered.

 

All of it could turn to dust, if only she could stay for a moment more.

 

* * *

 

.

.

.

The second chapter of this is a little more angst-ridden, and explores Carol's doubts about allowing herself to get too close to Maria and Monica's family. If that doesn't sound like your cup of tea, feel free to consider this to be the end of the series!

Kudos and comments are welcome if you enjoyed! Thank you for reading <3

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part felt decidedly different from the others, so I gave it it's own chapter. It's mostly self-indulgent exploration of Carol's angst and doubts due to the 5 years without Maria, and can be read only if you'd like further insight into her struggle to re-align herself with Maria and Monica's family. The previous chapter can be taken as the final scene if you are not a fan of languorously drawn-out angst and pretentious extended metaphors of the ocean.
> 
> If you happen to be a fan of such, please enjoy<3

* * *

 

They sat on the porch when the sun started it’s steep decline, the ground reaching up to claim it like a lover calling it to bed.

 

It was going to take a few days to get the water and electricity in their house up and running again, so Monica had ordered them all take out and offered her spare room for as long as they needed.

 

They were finishing up their food on the steps, humming along to each others lazy musings, too full of food and love to say much of anything profound. Monica had filled them in on most of what they’d missed, and Maria had spoken to her grandkids over the phone, elated and distraught in equal measure at how much they’d grown.

 

When they’d asked after Carol, she’d been a little shocked they still remembered her. She only managed a visit every few years, and she’d never allowed herself to hope they’d recognise her as anyone but a brief family-adjacent figure- passing through, soon to be displaced in their memory.

 

But they knew her, and asked her questions all about space, and called her ‘Aunty Carol’ just like Monica used to and Carol realises she can’t leave. Not yet, not until she sees them again.

 

She already feels as if she’d asked too much, just this small stolen time with them both, feels anxious for being in one place for so long without an immediate threat.

 

But she forces herself to ignore the feeling, and be selfish. Everyone in the universe got what they wanted; why couldn’t she? She’d given everything she had, she could take anything she wanted.

 

So she offers to drive them when Monica takes her car keys from her purse, and Monica gratefully accepts, exhausted and daunted by the long drive home.

 

Monica lays down in the back seat and was out like a light before they’d even gotten onto the main road.

 

Carol felt wide awake, restored by sleep and Maria’s presence beside her in the passenger seat. She kept stealing glances at her out of the corner of her eye as she drives down a long stretch of empty road, unable to get enough at the sight of her.

 

She wanted to count her eyelashes. She wanted to lie down for hours and look into her eyes and do little else. She wanted to hold her hands, her hips, her face between her palms.

 

She wanted Maria to tell her she had the heart of a star again. The comment still burned behind her ribs, as if her words had set something alight. As if before it was just a comet, a nebula, a stone - and Maria had pressed heat and pressure into her chest and turned it into something more.

 

The only time she felt real power was when Maria was looking at her.

 

The next time she looked, Maria caught her gaze, and Carol turned back to the road, scorned. She felt her cheeks heat, and Maria let out a quiet noise of amusement, slid her hand across the console and held Carol’s own.

 

Feeling a little chastened, Carol brought her hand up to her lips and kissed her knuckles as a peace offering. She could feel Maria’s fond gaze on her like a loving balm.

 

“Was there ever anyone else?” Maria asks, after the quiet had settled and stretched before them, endless as the road. “While I was gone? Because I was gone for quite some time.”

 

She didn’t seem particularly upset by the idea, nor angered by it. The threat of evoking her ire wouldn’t have shifted the answer either way.

 

“Not once,” Carol tells her, natural as anything. This, she could do. Loyalty came as easy as breathing. “It could have been a thousand years, and there never would be anyone else.”

 

Maria makes a non-committal noise, as if for some reason the thought didn’t sit right with her.

 

“Don’t say that,” She pleads softly, sounding a little forlorn. “I’d want you to be happy, if I were gone for good.”

 

“I wouldn’t,” Carol tells her, without a missed beat. “I’d want to be miserable.”

 

For some reason, this makes Maria laugh, sounding a little incredulous.

 

“Well, you’re lucky I want to spend the rest of my life with you, then,” She says, a little exasperated, and then the lightheartedness ekes out of her in drips. Her face settles into something more serious, Carol sees it reflected back at her from the dark windshield like a ghost. Like a premonition.“But one day - ”

 

“Don’t,” Carol cuts her off, forces her gaze straight ahead, the unforgiving expanse of the night, the white dividers eaten up under the fender of the car.

 

“Carol,” Maria tries again, her voice tired. “One day - ”

 

“I’ll find a cure.” Carol asserts, unmoving.

 

“To what?” Maria scoffs, derisive and incredulous once more. “Mortality?”

 

“Yes.” She bites back, not taking her eyes of the road.

 

Maria lets out a sigh, as if all the fight had gone out of her.

 

“You’re impossible,” She tells her, shaking her head in quiet disbelief, turning to look out of the passenger window.

 

In the tense silence, Carol breathes out, finally chancing a look at her. She takes in the dismissive line of her shoulders, notes that she’d yet to take her hand out of her own even though she was mad at her. As if to remind her she was loved, in spite of all of it, she was tethered to her if she needed to be.

 

Something fortifies within her, some nebulous feeling that was gaining traction, gaining solid ground, taking root. As if she would ever let anything take her from her again. As if anything would dare.

 

“I have the whole universe at my mercy,” Carol tells her, righteously, once the nebulous feeling takes form, and turns back to the road. “I’m going to make you sempiternal, and keep you forever.”

 

There’s a quiet that settles over them like a veil, as if some higher power was bearing witness and wished to conceal them.

 

Carol can feel Maria’s gaze on her like a brand. Then she turned away, which was worse.

 

“Love makes you scary,” She mutters against the window pane, tucking her legs under herself and staring out into the night.

 

That sits heavy in Carol’s gut like a stone, and the silence creeps back in, thick as fog.

 

She catches a glance of Monica in the rearview mirror, her face soft and young in sleep. The pale incandescence of the moon outlined Maria in an unearthly glow.

 

She felt othered, suddenly, inexplicably. Perhaps this was a mistake. Maybe five years was too large a gap to bridge - maybe it had changed her, maybe the endless fight with nothing to ground her had turned her into something else. Something ruthless - something greedy. Something underserving, something not meant to be loved. Maybe love had been taken away from her in a blazing arc of light, and replaced with power, with duty. Maybe this life wasn’t meant for her, and she was clinging to it out of nothing but fear.

 

The hand in her own squeezed, just once, and her thunderous thoughts ebbed to a quiet insidious hum, just as suddenly as they came.

 

“You think too much,” Maria says, when Carol turns to look at her. Maria gazed steadily out the window, and the calm vibrations of her voice made Carol relax in increments. “It’s scares me how much I love you, too.”

 

Carol feels that unearth some flood inside of her. She creases her brow, her hands tightening on the wheel, and something gives in her chest.

 

“How did you do it?” Carol asks, desperately, unable to keep it at bay. “For 6 years? Everyday I feared I’d just - collapse, give in, give up. I saved whole planets of people, and it was never enough. It will never be enough. I had no home, for years. I’d sleep, and get no rest. I’d eat, and it would taste like dust.”

 

Maria turns to look at her fully, sitting up straight. Something in her expression tightens.

 

“Pull over,” She orders, voice firm. “You’re too upset to drive; pull over.”

 

“What? I’m fine,” Carol grits out, determinedly keeping her eyes on the road. They’d not seen another car in a few miles, and the feeling that there was no one out there but them in the dark was starting to get oppressive. “I just - needed to say that.”

 

“Pull over,” Maria tells her again, brooking no argument. “I have a few things I need to say to you too.”

 

Carol flips the indicator with a little more passive aggressiveness than strictly necessary, and pulls up sharp on the hard shoulder in a flurry of dust caught in the stringent glow of the front beams.

 

The movement jostles Monica awake, and she sits up in a disorientated haze.

 

“Wh - what’s wrong?” She asks the car at large, and Carol stares resolutely out the from window, watching the dust settle.

 

“Nothing, baby,” Maria hums to her, frustratingly calm. She pries the door open and undoes her seatbelt. “Carol just needs to stretch her legs a little. You can go back to sleep.”

 

Monica makes a non-committal sound, already half-asleep.

 

“Come on,” Maria tells her, voice composed, and gets out of the car.

 

Carol breathes out, forces herself to calm down, makes sure the parking break is locked in. She leaves the keys in the ignition so they have enough light to see, and though she’d very much like to slam the car door, she shuts it softly for Monica’s sake.

 

She makes a show of shoving her hands in her jacket pockets against the cold, but Maria is looking up at the stars, leaning against the bonnet of the car.

 

Carol comes to stand beside her, takes in her profile, her eyes bright in the moonlight, and Carol feels all the fight go out of her like a ghost.

 

She wants to say she loves her - she wants to say she’s sorry. But she knows Maria will speak first, when she’s ready, so she holds her tongue.

 

Just when she fears the words will spill out of her anyway, Maria says,

 

“She’s your kid too, you know.”

 

It’s not anything of what Carol expected her to say, so it shocks her silent. Maria glances at her, just briefly, takes in her silence and look of uncertainty, and then looks back up at the sky.

 

“Earlier, you said I’d raised a strong kid,” Maria tells her, and Carol remembers saying it, remembers how it had felt wrong in her chest and in her mouth and in the air around her once she’d said it aloud. “You raised her too.”

 

Carol opens her mouth to say something, anything, but finds she cannot make a sound.

 

“You were there in the delivery room with me, no one else,” Maria goes on, unfettered. “You were there for every birthday. Every Christmas. You raised that kid with me until you were taken away. And then you came home to us, even when you couldn’t remember why.

 

“So, don’t talk about her as if she’s just mine. This is your family. Don’t distance yourself because of what you’re scared to lose. Don’t deny yourself the love you have here.”

 

Carol pushes off from the car, comes to stand in front of her. She draws Maria’s hands into her own, and finally Maria looks at her, two streaks of tears arcing down her face.

 

“Maria,” Carol tries, achingly, but Maria shakes her head; she wasn’t done.

 

“I lost 6 years of my time with you, and 5 years with my family. That’s time I’m never getting back.” Maria tells her, and hearing it aloud makes something settle tight in Carol’s chest. “I want you, in any capacity I can have you, in any time I’m allowed left. I’ll take whatever you give me. And one day I’ll be gone - but you won’t be alone. I need you to know that.”

 

Her eyes search Carol’s face, looking for some kind of recognition in what she was saying. Carol looked helplessly back, unable to make a sound. The weight of what she was saying threatened to press her into the earth.

 

When she’d started to get her memories back; she’d never allowed herself to hope for more than Maria. Maria had always been enough, too much more than she deserved. Monica had always been an extension of that, always in orbit, always allowed under the pretence that if Carol didn’t think too much, she could love her too.

 

But beyond that? How could she fathom it - how could she even dare?

 

People with power like she had didn’t get to have family. She shouldn’t be tethered, she shouldn’t have a weakness - she could barely justify the love she allowed herself already, and Maria asks she take more?

 

“Carol,” Maria’s voice calls her back from her thoughts, draws her closer with their joined hands. “I need you to tell me you know that.”

 

The click of a door handle startles her before she can answer, and they both turn towards the sound when Monica’s shoes meet the gravel.

 

“What’s going on?” Monica asks them, cautious, half shielded by the car door.

 

Carol sighs, turns her face away, steps back from Maria whilst shoving her hands back into her pockets.

 

“We should get back on the road,” She tells them, hoping it would diffuse the tense air. “It’s getting late.”

 

“We’re not going anywhere until this is sorted out,” Maria warns her, using her this-is-an-argument-that-you-won’t-win voice, which impressed and exasperated Carol in equal measure.“Monica, come over here for a moment.”

 

“Oh, hey, I’m not getting involved - ”

 

“Monica.”

 

“Jesus, okay,” Monica breathes out, resignedly closing the car door and making her way over. “Before we get started, I want to remind both of you I’m not in any way qualified to be a marriage counsellor.”

 

When her attempt a humour doesn’t get much of a rise, nor eases the tension, she sobers a little.

 

“What’s this about?” She looks between them both, voice uncertain.

 

“I just need you to settle an argument, baby,” Maria placates her, calmly, and there was a building panic inside Carol’s chest like a hornets nest, buzzy and jittery and tight. “What would you call Carol? If someone asked you what relation she was to you?”

 

Monica creased her brow, as if not fully comprehending what she was being asked.She looked between them again, and seemed to understand that this was important.

 

“I mean, she’s - ” She shook her head a little, as if the answer were so easy she feared she was being tricked. “She’s my mom.”

 

Monica shrugged minutely after she said it, as though it were that simple, as if Carol didn’t feel like someone had just collapsed a building on her.

 

“You’re my parents,” Monica clarifies, like it was obvious, and Carol feels her breath get swept from her at the mere _word - parent, she was a parent, she had the love of her life next to her and the kid they’d raised between them -_ “Can we get back in the car now?”

 

Carol turns to Maria, catches her steady, knowing look - like her eyes were telling her _yes, this is yours, it’s been here all along_ \- and Carol fears she might sob from the force of it, the arcing wave of love crested above and threatening to crash down upon her.

 

She walks forward, her body moving of it’s own volition, and draws Monica into her arms. She’d grown tall, like her mother, but Carol still manages to tuck her under her chin, press a kiss into her hair.

 

She opens her arm to beckon Maria in with them, and Maria’s smile is fond and small,like a secret between them.

 

They stay like that, tucked against each other, until Monica begins to squirm.

 

“Not that this isn’t heartwarming,” Monica mumbles, awkwardly patting them both on the back. “But I’d really like to sleep in an actual bed at some point tonight.”

 

Maria huffs in amusement, just refraining from rolling her eyes.

 

“Alright, get in,” She tells them both, exasperatedly fond. “I’ll drive.”

 

Carol, yet to say anything at all, does as she’s told, on autopilot. She was still processing, shocky from it all, flinching at the slightest of sounds. The wave had yet to break, just poised above her, and she was caught in the shadow of it, unsure of what to do.

 

Once they were back on the road, the monotonous blur of trees and the hum of the car lulls her into a distant state, like she was cocooned in cotton, separated from the world by something opaque, immaterial.

 

Maria seemed to sense her unease, glancing at her whilst she drove, and she placed her hand palm up on the console between them. An offering; a respite - but Carol could just see it out of the corner of her blurred vision, and couldn’t make herself move.

 

She didn’t know what it meant, if she took it. What if she were selfish, and took what she wanted, and then something terrible happened? What if someone, or something, out there in the great expanse of the dark, learned of her weakness, and came to destroy it?

 

What if she allowed herself a family and then something took it away?

 

She wouldn’t survive it. Losing Maria had driven her to the edge of a precipice she’d nearly not made it back from.

 

If she lost her kid, she didn’t know what she’d do - and if something were to happen to Monica’s family? It would eat her alive from the inside out, she’d rot from the core.

 

She’d seen what losing a family could do to a person. She’d seen what it did to people with power like hers, and she couldn’t promise it wouldn’t turn her just as dark, just as unforgiving.

 

That was the problem with being born human, she was wrought with a vengefulness that stopped her just short of being entirely good. She would never be impartial, unfeeling, perfectly balanced and just and benevolent. She had a vivid streak of wickedness borne of retribution to unfairness; she would meet fire with molten magma heat.

 

If someone took this family from her, she’d burn the whole galaxy down around them.

 

“Look,” Monica says, interrupting her thoughts entirely.The contrast between her existential dread and polite conversation made her blink away the impression of destruction from the backs of her eyes like acid bubbling in a film reel. “Matthias just sent me this.”

 

Monica was leaning across the console to show a picture her husband had sent her on the phone.

It was a picture of Matteo and Lisa, Monica’s toddlers, sleepily leaning against each other in an effort to sit upright.

 

“He says they’re determined to stay awake until we get home,” Monica hums, voice brimming with fond affection, and Carol feels it break through the barrier she had around herself, the fuzzy disorientation leaving her like the night receding when the sun breaks the horizon.

 

She’s smiling softly before she realises it, taking in their pudgy little cheeks, tight little curls reminiscent of when Monica was small. It would be easy, to let herself love them. She feared she already did.

 

“Stubborn as anything, just like their mother,” Carol says, and Monica flashes a grin.

 

“Just like their grandmothers, you mean,” Monica tells her, mutinously, and sits back into the back seat to reply to the message, still smiling.

 

Carol forces an amused noise, turning back to the road, breathing out as steadily as she could. She noted, with a brief sense of foreboding, that Maria had put both hands back on the wheel.

 

She told herself it was necessary, now they were on small winding country roads, to have both hands free to shift gears and steer. It still settled uneasily within her, as she curled up in the seat, cushioned her arm against the window and tried to get some rest.

 

She only opened her eyes again when the car eased to a stop, pulling into the drive way, the tyres crunching over gravel. The lights were on in Monica’s house in the dark of the neighbour, like a beacon in a storm.

 

Monica is the first to leave the car, elated to be home and exhausted for her own bed. There’s the happy buzz of muffled voices once she opens the door, her husband greeting her with the twins curled up asleep in his arms.

 

Maria watches silently through the windshield, cutting the engine with a soft click. Carol watched her profile, the soft glow of the porch light turning her dark skin a deep gold.

 

“We’ll be inside,” Maria says quietly, as if she could barely make herself make a sound. She offers a small smile, a little tight around the edges, and presses her warm palm briefly to Carol’s ankle tucked up against the seat.

 

She nods, once, as if to herself, before getting out of the car, shutting the door behind her. Carol watches her take the porch steps with that uneasy feeling twisting inside her stomach, and when she stepped into the house, Carol felt entirely alone in the dark.

 

She felt as though she were in a small boat, set adrift in a storm in the middle of the night. She’d be okay if she could only make it into the lighthouse, but if she got too close, her little boat would be destroyed against the rocks, and she’d be dragged under.

 

The wave roiled, suspended above her, and she knew either way she would drown.

 

Suddenly, the car became suffocating, a little box where all she could hear was her own breathing. She pushed open the passenger door and stumbled out into the night, the cold air seizing her and the crunch of gravel under her feet reminding her she was grounded.

 

She felt a call to the sky above, the emptiness, the lack of crushing gravity. She turned her face up to the stars and thought about running from it. Maria would understand. Monica would already be asleep. The children would soon forget her name.

 

Of all of the things in the universe, this is what she couldn’t face - this little warm house with the lights on, waiting for her to come in.

 

Carol heard the door click softly behind her, and she turned towards the noise, guilt threading through her in a sharp sting.

 

Maria stood in the doorway, Matteo tucked against her, sleepily rubbing his face into her shoulder. There was a look on her face like she knew exactly what Carol had been thinking; and of course she did. She knew everything about her. She looked as though she half expected Carol to be gone already.

 

“Oh, Carol,” She hummed, softly, her expression understanding, her smile sad but fond. “If you need to go, then go, baby,” She tells her, gently into the night air. “We’ll be right here.”

 

She felt the call of the sky silenced by those words, hushed by the weight of them. The panic eased from her, her head clearing,and she could finally breathe. She knew, with a suddenness, that if anyone tried to take this family from her, she’d stop them. There was no other alternative, ever; she’d win.

 

Carol felt herself already waist deep in the water then, the wave broke on her shoulders so softly she barely felt it. She hadn’t prepared for the eventuality of not drowning, of merely being bathed in it, saturated in the love she was being given.

 

She understood then, that it wasn’t even her decision to make. She was already loved; she would always be loved. And she was stronger for it, not weaker. Nothing this powerful could be called weakness. She was already wading towards Maria before she even realised it.

 

“I was just getting some air,” Carol says, finally, in lieu of anything profound or soul-baring. Maria already knew all she needed to know by looking at her.

 

So, when Maria held out her hand, knowing and kind, Carol took the porch steps to take it, drawn in close to press a kiss to Maria’s lips and to Matteo’s soft curls.

 

Maria hummed a small noise of contentment, glowing softly in the porch light and love-warm.

 

She turned and walked into the house, Matteo asleep in her arms, knowing Carol would follow.

 

 

The End 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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> Thank you for reading, please feel free to leave kudos and comments if you enjoyed! If anyone has any further ideas for this couple, I'd be interested to write them again <3


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